


Water of the Flesh

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Incest, Other, space capitalism is bad kids, sublte referencenes to cat genetics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 07:58:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3402926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dynasties are a little fucked up.<br/>Quasi-immortal Space Dynasties are...a little more so.<br/>(character/relationship study)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water of the Flesh

_The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the [flesh]_

_John 19:26-27_

* * *

 

Balem is much older than she is, and much stronger, the first time Kalique Abrasax tries to kill her brother.

Which is why it doesn’t work, even pressing down with all her child’s strength on his throat, she just isn’t _big_ enough. Her palms are too narrow, arms too thin, and she is still very young, much too young to _push_ hard enough when Balem startles from sleep, gasping, and flings her off.

Kalique sniffs haughtily and pushes her hair back from her face while Balem palms at his neck.

He rests his cheek against his knee while his other leg dangles loosely over the edge of his bed, and Kalique settles herself primly to his left, unrepentant.

“You should’ve tried harder,” he whispers.

In the morning, Kalique will have a bruise in the shape of her brother’s spindly bedposts all along her ribs, almost to her hip, which her mother will not allow to be healed (she refuses to fix Balem’s throat, either, and he talks with the strangled, sibilant eloquence of a man with a half-crushed windpipe for the rest of his life).

“I will.” and Kalique lays her head against his shoulder, and if she streeeeetches her fingers as far she can, thumb to the tip of her littlest finger, she can _just_ span his throat.

Balem fits his hand over hers and squeezes.

For her next birthday, he sends an an assassin, and a letter wishing her well.

[x]

She really should discourage this kind of sentiment; all her siblings were already dead by this age, and her father soon after. It’s the way of dynasties.

But Balem tips his head back into the cradle of her bent knees and his limbs splay out coltish and faintly awkward still, and Seraphi strokes his hair despite herself.  

“Don’t antagonize your sister.” She murmurs, smoothing back the hair at his temples. It needs cutting. “You are an Abrasax. _Petty squabbles_ ,” she says, nails scraping just too hard across his scalp, “are beneath you. Do you have any idea how many people have had to die for us to be here? Who gave us the right to do that?”

“They were _Harvests_.” Balem turns his cheek into her leg, eyes slitted half open, and Seraphi chooses to ignore the way his eyebrows knit together and pinch up at the ends. “We _made_ them.”

Her fingertips smooth away the sting in little circles, and his eyes slip shut.

“Exactly. And so we decided that _our_ lives matter more than theirs. Some lives will _always_ matter more, because we _make_ it so. That is why we are still here.” Seraphi cradles his head between her palms and presses the words to the back of his skull. “I want it finished between you and Kalique.”

It would be so easy to snap his neck as he nods against her grip.

But she won’t, of course, because Seraphi Abrasax loves the children who are assuredly going to kill her one day, if she’s raised them right.

[x]

There will only ever be one inheritance, however many ways it’s split. Everybody knows that.

[x]

It’s one of Kalique’s estates, eye-searingly pastoral and nauseatingly warm, and whatever it is they’re drinking is floral and sweet and everyone who ever knew how to make it is dead now.

They kept bees, apparently, who waver between Balem’s still regard and Kalique’s fingers along the rim of her cup like they’re afraid to pick sides.

“It would be terribly crass to talk about killing him out in the open,” she murmurs into the the clink of cup settling on table. Balem nods crookedly.

“Naturally.”

“Poor Titus.” Kalique sighs, “So young, too. Do you think we ought to let him grow just a little? I always wanted a pet.”

Warm, and it smells like bone and flowers while Kalique combs her hair over one shoulder, giggling warmer still.

“Strangle him in his crib” Balem rasps. “You’ve grown.”  

They don’t move quite...humanly anymore, the older they get. And Balem is old. Kalique doesn’t see when he rises, doesn’t even realize he’s moved until Balem’s hand comes down down around the meat of her arm, rings pressing into her bicep. She skims her fingers over his knuckles and makes herself smile.

“Strangle? I could never. Nobody but you, or I’d spoil the memory.”

They arrange to have him drowned, instead.

[x]

“Is Balem better than us?” Titus cocks his head “Because he’s older? I don’t think he should have everything just because he’s older.”

Kalique gathers him up into her lap and whispers in his ear.

Titus beams.

[x]

Every constituent element of the human body is also a constituent element of any given set of stars, which makes them...mundane; that everything in the universe comes down to the same old salt and bone afterall.

So, Kalique steps away from the window, dignified lunar gray streaking her hair because it suits her, right now, to be old. Young flesh is so _hungry_ all the time. Age spots her face, and Seraphi Abrasax looks young enough to be her daughter; family is strange that way.  But for now, the ache in her hips as Kalique lowers herself carefully onto a long, plush chair is a novelty, like the throb in her knuckles as she flicks her fingers to beckon her latest splice, who comes slinking out of her corner on hushed bare feet.

This one is more than a third feline: white-furred and blue-eyed and almost entirely deaf. She cocks her head and wrinkles her nose before sliding up beside Kalique, tucking her little head under Kalique’s chin and purring. She’s very sweet.

Very pretty.

Kalique hopes that Titus enjoys her, as she is a woman of breeding, and it would be a shame for things to be... _unpleasant_ before he dies.

[x]

Sometimes Titus fucks men who look like his brother, all dappled shoulders and petulant mouths, but none of them have Balem’s eyes. Sometimes Titus fucks men who look like his brother, and tells every one of them to keep their eyes shut.

The one and only time he has Balem in his bed,Titus tries to choke him with a bedsheet, and when that fails, pins him down and  pushes his knee into his brother’s neck while his hand tugs cruelly between Balem’s legs. Balem hisses through his teeth, and tongues messily at Titus’s cock until he shudders, then cuts open his femoral artery with something so small and sharp Titus barely feels it until he’s lost too much blood.

Balem’s eyes glitter translucently and impossibly dark; they go on and on and on and--

[x]

Seraphi Abrasax is dead.

[x]

Balem surfaces, blinking the wet from his eyelashes as 100%, top-grade, pure Abrasax serum sheets down his back and thinks:

While Kalique sighs, shaking her head so  her hair billows redly through 100%, top-grade, pure Abrasax serum, and thinks:

While Titus cups handful after handful of 100%, top-grade, pure Abrasax serum over his chest, lets it drip through his fingers and onto the floor beside him, and thinks:

There is only one Abrasax dynasty to inherit, no matter how many ways it’s split.

[x]

Seraphi Abrasax is alive. Her name is Jupiter Jones.

 


End file.
